The undated file photo shows students taking a mock test for the college entrance exam. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 28 (Korea Bizwire) — Only 40 percent of teenagers from multicultural families enroll in university, raising concerns that they are falling into the ‘low-education’ trap, a survey showed Monday.
The Ministry of Gender and Equality conducted a nationwide survey of 15,000 multicultural households, in which only 40.5 percent of teenagers (age 9 to 24) entered colleges and universities last year, down by 9.1 percentage points from 2018.
The overall college enrollment rate in the country, in contrast, stood at 71.5 percent, up by nearly 5 percentage points, widening the gap between the national rate and multicultural households from 18 percentage points to 31 percentage points.
Unlike the plunging rate of college enrollment among multicultural households, there are actually more of them who would like to study.
The share of multicultural teenagers wishing to study at a four-year university jumped from 56.5 percent in 2018 to 67.1 percent in 2021, up by more than 10 percentage points.
The share of those wishing to study at universities with programs shorter than four years also jumped from 10.7 percent to 23.3 percent.
“Parental care is very important when it comes to education in South Korea,” the ministry said.
“Married immigrants struggle with language barriers, and without sufficient access to information related to college entrance, which leads to difficulties in providing education to their children.”
“Multicultural teenagers have a low rate of participation in private education, which also seems like one of the factors,” the ministry added.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
